What? Me worry?

One of my favorite and unique steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" is Step 34: "Hold Congress and Senate committees and subcommittees accountable for their respective areas of responsibility, and remove committee members from committee posts if they do not meet minimal performance criteria." The book mentions some of the no-brainer examples that would have come into play if Step 34 was in effect:

• Anybody sitting on a House or Senate intelligence committee on September 10, 2001 should have been removed from committee posts on September 12, 2001 for the complete, utter failure to anticipate an attack on American soil that killed almost 3,000 American civilians.
• Several years ago, it was widely reported that injured members of our armed forces were coming back to hospitals that were very substandard, filthy and dangerous. Since this seemed to be a surprise to everyone including those members of Congress sitting on the committees responsible for veterans' affairs and treatment. They should have all been removed from their committee posts or been forced to hold their meetings in the same degrading hospital conditions our soldiers were forced to endure.
• Several years ago the Department of Agriculture reported that it could not account for $5 billion in taxpayer money. Just could not find it. Did not know if and when it was spent and if it was spent, did not know what it was spent on. Any member of a committee responsible for Department of Agriculture budgets should have been gone.

These were the three examples cited in the book. However, this past week I came across another great example, so pathetic, that I wish I could have gotten it into the book. An article in the October 2, 2009 edition of the The Week magazine (www.theweek.com) reviewed the status of the 600 mile fence that was being constructed along the U.S. and Mexican border to keep out illegal aliens. Their findings included:

• The fence construction is seven years behind schedule.
• It is millions of dollars over budget.
• It will cost $6.4 billion just to maintain the fence over the next twenty years, according to government auditors. That comes down to about $870,000 a DAY for twenty years.
• The infrared cameras that are used to detect motion where there is no physically fence fail often due to bad weather and sand storms.
• There have been more than 3,000 breaches in the physical part of the fence with each breach costing about $1,300 each to fix. Breachers have figured out how to get past the fence by cutting through, climbing over or smashing through the fence with vehicles.

Anybody in Congress sitting on any committee remotely connected to this fence should be immediately removed from that committee. The numbers are mind boggling: billions of dollars spent on a government project that obviously does not work. I cannot imagine $870,000 of taxpayer money going to the maintenance of this fence on a daily basis for twenty years.

While this situation is pathetic enough, it was authorized and should have been audited by members of the current political class. These are the same people that want to take over the entire health care system of the country. Do we really think they have any chance in creation of running that process cost effectively? They could not even build a simple fence or run a simple rebate program (Cash For Clunkers), there is no way they can run health care. But why should they worry? They are not held accountable by a rule like Step 34 and you can bet their health care plans will be better than ours.